Environmental Audit Committee and POST to host 'Breathe' seminar

15 October 2012

Joan Walley MP, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, will be chairing presentations and a discussion on air quality on Tuesday 16th October 2012, 14:00 - 16:00, in Committee Room 14 in the House of Commons.

This seminar will highlight the effects and the artistic depiction of invisible air pollution. Artist Dryden Goodwin will explore his new work entitled Breathe, a large scale video projection on the roof of St Thomas’ Hospital, opposite the House of Commons. The Breathe video projection takes place at night until 28th October 2012.

Goodwin’s scientific collaborator Professor Frank Kelly, King’s College London who chairs COMEAP, the Government medical advisory committee on air pollutants, will discuss the effects of air pollution on children’s health.

Chair of the Committee, Joan Walley MP, commented:

"When the Environmental Audit Committee examined air quality last year, we recommended that the Government should start taking poor air quality much more seriously. There need to be credible plans and strategies in place to ensure action across the Government departments involved, and greater involvement with local authorities where transport policies can significantly shape local air quality. There should be Low Emissions Zones for cities beyond London. Perhaps our most important recommendation, though, was for a publicity campaign to allow people to appreciate the risks and take action to reduce emissions, and to minimise their own exposure to air pollution.

It is clear that such action is still needed, and events like this ‘Breathe’ seminar and Dryden’s video exhibition at St Thomas’, play an important role in keeping up the pressure for action on Government.

We are determined to help promote public debate about this urgent public health problem. We are not likely to see, touch or feel a repeat of the Great Smog of London of 1952, but we can use these events to sound the wake up call still urgently needed."